Elma Kennedy BrownClick to enlarge

Educator, community activitist.

Born at Westport, Ontario on 29 December 1879, daughter of William Kennedy and Selma Wright, she came to Manitoba in the early 1900s where she taught school for some years, including at Elmwood School (1908-1909) and Lord Selkirk School (1910-1911). She resigned from teaching in March 1911 and, on 4 May 1911, she married pharmacist John Kerr Brown (1883-1976) at Winnipeg. They subsequently had five children: Margaret Evelyn Brown (b 1912), Harold A. Brown (1918-2001), John “Jack“ Brown (b 1920), Dorothy Brown, and James Brown. In 1915, she became a trustee for the Winnipeg School Board, the first woman so elected in city history. She also volunteered as an English tutor to arriving immigrants, and was President of the Women’s Auxiliary to the Pharmacists of Manitoba. She wrote a book of poetry entitled Threshing Grain, in 1946. She died at the Winnipeg General Hospital on 19 August 1962 and was buried in the Elmwood Cemetery.